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26 March 2013 at 23:57 #3597
“Monks are not cool” – so is that a shout-out to A Good Man Goes To War – or to the First Doctor’s adventures with the Meddling Monk?
26 March 2013 at 13:20 #3573I wonder if they’re now seriously considering a spin-off for the Paternoster Gang? Or – have they decided that they’re going to be semi-regular companions, the way the Brig and UNIT used to be?
Now only four sleeps left …
24 March 2013 at 18:05 #3557Does anyone know if Series 8 is planned to be screened before the 50th?
The lack of information on Series 8 is stunning. In fact, it’s getting quite noticeable that there is NO information on Series 8 beyond ‘there will be one’. Which is partly why I’ve developed my Especially Bonkers Theory that Matt Smith’s Eleven is regenerating at the end of Series 7. It explains why they can’t tell us anything about S8. At all. Even slightly.
Until, presumably, May 18th.
In the meantime, Mr Smith is reprising his role for the Christmas Special as either the Big Bad or a Past Doctor, and S8 has in fact been secretly filming at TV Centre – under the guise of An Adventure in Space and Time.
Especially Bonkers enough? đ
24 March 2013 at 09:02 #3509I keep remembering that we’re coming up to the 50th – and the original series started with the Doctor travelling with his granddaughter.
And way back before Steven Moffat started his tenure, he asked for the Doctor’s daughter to survive.
Somewhere in the universe is the Doctor’s daughter. Which equally means, somewhere in the universe, he could have a granddaughter.
Though I admit that I’m not so worried about the ‘ambiguity’ of the Song/Doctor marriage. Moffat’s consistently used ‘marriage’ as a child-friendly way of saying ‘they’re having sex/babies may possibly be on the way’. He might have dropped the Jenny route and decided Clara could instead be the daughter of River and the Doctor.
24 March 2013 at 09:01 #3507Doesn’t say ‘answer truthfully’. It says ‘no one can speak falsely’. The difference may be important.
24 March 2013 at 08:57 #3505Must not post bonkers theories in news. Must not post bonkers theories in news. Must not…
23 March 2013 at 14:16 #3463@scaryb She talks about ‘Mum’ in Asylum of the Daleks, though, so the assumption is that – if she is being planted in each era – she is being planted as a baby.
If this is the original Clara Oswald, and the fracturing comes later, she’s got memories of her original self – which the Victorian version didn’t seem to. The Victorian version also has a native Cockney accent (she reverts to it under stress) while the modern  young Clara has a native Lancashire accent (presumably in case Jenna-Louise Coleman reverts to it under stress đ )
I’d say the swing and the meeting as a child is deliberate shades of Amelia Pond.
22 March 2013 at 21:59 #3401The one thing I did giggle at in Angels Take Manhattan is that it seemed very obvious that Amy’s reading glasses had in fact been sized for Matt. Karen Gillan kept having to push them back up her nose.
But yeah, a lovely story. It stands a re-watch very well.
I know you don’t like Power of Three, Jim, but if you watch it and Angels back to back, one thing you really notice is how The Doctor is being played as the Ponds’ ‘teenage’ son. Very evident in Power of Three, with the Wii and the short attention span, but still carried on in Angels. Not just the reading aloud but also the ‘babysitter’ joke.
22 March 2013 at 15:16 #3359Or maybe Steven Moffat shouted at him once?
You do get the impression that there’s some kind of dislike there: the PE stories are consistently negative – and the innuendo in the last sentence of the article is very much ‘Street of Shame’ stuff.
21 March 2013 at 13:25 #3345Yup, I think the ‘erased from Doctor Who’ phrase is more likely to be one of the ‘different versions’.
21 March 2013 at 11:07 #3341And now they’ve had to close the discussion, only three days after the article was posted. Given that we’d got up to 78 posts by or mentioning TS, I’m not surprised.
On the one hand I’m thinking ‘drat the man’, on the other I’m thinking ‘I hope he’s okay’. Because @janetteb‘s point is right; he’s coming across as nasty, spiteful and mindless. Which wasn’t quite Alexander; you could sometimes have a pretty good discussion with him. His inability to accept that he could ever be wrong (to the extent that I well remember a conversation where I proved him wrong, and he still wouldn’t accept it) seems to have degenerated into abusing anyone who even suggests that he’s wrong.
21 March 2013 at 10:40 #3339The huge shouting match was seen by quite a few people, but nobody seems to know what it was actually about. Or rather, there are so many different versions of what it was about, it’s pretty obvious no one really knows.
If you look at the number of jokes about Amy’s temper and Scottishness, it’s a reasonable supposition that Steven Moffat might be basing it on his own short fuse…
19 March 2013 at 23:45 #3323Dear Lord – there are now 67 posts either by TruculentSheep or replying to him. That’s a fifth of the total posts to date…
19 March 2013 at 22:45 #3315The TardisWikia has an interesting collection of Moffat helmed cloister bells.
The Eleventh Hour – when the engines were phasing
The Curse of the Black Spot – when the TARDIS was teleported onto the out-of-phase ship by the Siren
The Doctor’s Wife – when the TARDIS was taken over by House
The God Complex – not the real TARDIS, presumably, but in the room of the Doctor’s greatest fear.
19 March 2013 at 20:05 #3307God Complex. Joe (the gambler) quotes it. We also heard the TARDIS Cloister bell in The Doctor’s Wife. So ‘the bells of St John’ could be a reference to the TARDIS.
And now I’m thinking “we have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow”
18 March 2013 at 14:25 #3269Really odd bit of phrasing in the BBC’s latest publicity piece about the 50th Anniversary programme.
The 50th anniversary special, due to begin filming in April, will be broadcast in 3D around the show’s birthday in November.
Around? Is it a two parter?
That would certainly make sense of the proposed plans for a cinema screening – a two parter would be film length.
17 March 2013 at 12:40 #3245Him being in the Xmas ep is a big olâ lie. Wouldnât be the first time weâd had that scenario. âSomeone definitely dies on that beachâ bollocks for instance. (Although Iâm wondering if we wonât actually be back on Lake Silencio at some point).
I’m wondering if Lake Silencio will turn out to be where ‘The Doctor’ died – and we’re now travelling towards the point when ‘Doctor Who’ is reborn.
They were really, really specific about placing the date-of-death as Good Friday 2012. And they seem to be equally firm about starting Season 7 pt 2 on Easter Saturday 2013. And then there’s all those bloody eggs…
16 March 2013 at 20:34 #3221@jimthefish – yes, it was something I noticed about the Matt Smith interview previously linked to. His replies were entirely compatible with someone leaving the series at the end of S7, but reprising his role for the 50th Anniversary Special.
I’m still going for the end of S7 for the surprise regeneration; everyone will know Smith is coming back to film the 50th, so no one will expect it.
15 March 2013 at 20:55 #3201Not exactly a TV programme, but a heads-up for a radio production of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21702807
Actually, I loved the TV version, low budget special effects and all. It was weird. Since they seem to have collected a cast to die for, it looks like other people loved it too.
On R4 tomorrow, presumably iPlayer thereafter.
15 March 2013 at 11:26 #3193Re: Caroline
Reading between the lines there are several possibilities:
Possibility one: Steven Moffat is impossible to work with.
Possibility two: the combination of Steven Moffat and cheeseparing BBC execs means the other Executive producer(s) is/are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Possibility three: it’s the BBC hierarchy who are impossible to work with.
Since she’s being replaced by Cardiff’s Head of Drama, I’d incline to possibilities two or three. Moffat certainly doesn’t have the same kind of relationship with his other execs that RTD had with Julie Gardner, but the impression I always got there was that they were both on the show because they were already good friends; she wanted RTD to helm the reboot and he wouldn’t do it unless she was on board. Moffat, on the other hand, is largely getting producers from the Beeb that he hasn’t worked with before.
It’s a shame he can’t work with his normal team from Hartswood. I know Sherlock is shorter, but you don’t get any hint of  problems (though what would I know, maybe he and Sue Vertue are throwing the crockery at each other behind the scenes) đ
14 March 2013 at 12:26 #3179How the hell do you make a new thread here?
Ask @craig or @phaseshift.
Not me. Sorry, Craig, I know you offered and I didn’t reply, but I’ve just sorted out a problem with local time not displaying properly, files not loading properly and then I need to look at our chat and wiki facilities – I really don’t want to take on mod responsibilities for another site. đ
13 March 2013 at 12:29 #3165these days even being the showrunner is quite a public-facing roleâŚ
That, I think, was down to RTD. Who does have a good knowledge of showmanship, and decided that – if Who was going to survive the one year they’d been given – the programme needed to be big, big, big. With even more publicity than could be managed by Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.
And so we had the Confidentials, and we had the newspaper interviews, and the showrunner became very much the public face of the production team. Everyone who succeeds RTD is now stuck with that assumption – that part of your job is writing articles for Radio Times on the upcoming episodes and being interviewed at press screenings and going on Breakfast TV and in general keeping up the excitement between series.
12 March 2013 at 23:52 #3157However, whatâs maybe interesting is that although no one can speak falsely, the one thing we do know is that âthe Doctor liesâ.
Indeed. And one of the most subtle ways to lie is to tell the exact truth. Just not the whole truth.
There’s also the technique where you tell the truth so unconvincingly that no one believes a word you say, but that one is hardly likely to work on the Fields of Trenzalore, where everyone knows no living creature can speak falsely. đ
10 March 2013 at 22:52 #3137Okay, so a few additional comments for the Doctors’ Pub League:
Seventh – could also be persuaded to do a bit of juggling. Will spot any under-18’s and glare at them until they order lemonade.
10th Doctor. Likely to start sobbing into his beer once he’s had a few.
5th and 8th Doctors: likely to find a corner somewhere and start up their own conversation. By some little-understood means, their table would end up incredibly crowded…
9 March 2013 at 21:49 #3125Hereâs what you originally thought:
NOOOOOO! Craig! We’re trying to get away from religion and ethics!
9 March 2013 at 19:50 #3123The Doctor is all for scientific rationalism; the attitude of the writers to this depends very much on the individual writer. đ
Regarding your ‘I am the Doctor’ theory; it would need to be a metaphorical truth rather than a literal one (so that’s Dawkins buggered, then – no, sorry, moving swiftly away from religion!) because one of the criteria is ‘no living creature can speak falsely’.
So it really would have to be a ‘I am Spartacus’ moment; people saying that, in spirit, they are the Doctor.
The other get-out clause, of course, is ‘living creature’. A robot, presumably, can speak falsely, or one of those creepy robo-men from the Dalek Asylum.
The other problem is that you aren’t allowed to ‘fail to answer’. So your idea that the Doctor mustn’t be found is a good one. If he’s found, he’ll have to answer.
My contribution to the bonkers theorising: ‘speak falsely’ is not the same as ‘tell the truth.’ Â It just means you can’t say anything you don’t believe.
9 March 2013 at 18:40 #3119High Anglican myself (with a Roman Catholic education) – and I long since came to the conclusion that RTD simply doesn’t get religion, in the same way that someone truly colour-blind doesn’t get colour. His attempts to write stories about religion are always slightly off, somehow.
I don’t mean because he’s an atheist; both Terry Pratchett and Steven Moffat are (or say they are) atheists, and in both cases I tend to nod my head in recognition when they write stories about religion. Even if I don’t agree with them, I recognise exactly what they’re talking about. They get it; they understand religious people – they just don’t believe in it.
8 March 2013 at 20:30 #3085At least three, possibly four bow-ties. All with different patterns.
The 50th Anniversary convention is tempting, isn’t it?
5 March 2013 at 09:29 #3039My mad theory (reboot) is well known đ – so I’d say that if he resolves the S7 storyline, it’ll be a resolution that also leads straight into the 50th.
So, say, the Eleventh is completely memory wiped at the resolution to S7, 50th starts with two teachers finding their college student lives in a police box with her mad grandfather, then an epic storyline where the Eleventh needs to reconnect with every single one of his past selves to save the universe.
Only minor problem is that he doesn’t remember his past selves (hmm, could that be Clara’s purpose? She’s a living fob watch?)
2 March 2013 at 18:49 #3025Ah, yes, Jon Pertwee. This is the stage of Doctor Who when I start being able to remember the episodes from watching them on broadcast, rather than on video and DVD.
Since I don’t remember Liz Shaw at all, and my clearest memory of Jo Grant is The Green Death, I can only conclude I started watching near the end of Pertwee’s reign. This would certainly explain why I was so bewildered later on during The Deadly Assassin. Who was this decaying creature, and why on earth was he considered important?
I liked Jon Pertwee, but he was never ‘my’ Doctor. He was very much the action hero; I enjoyed the show and it quite frequently drove me into the hallway. But I never felt that Pertwee’s Doctor was an alien; for all the Venusian Akido stuff, Pertwee’s was very much the Doctor of ‘science and rationalism’.
I do have a clear memory of where I was during Pertwee’s regeneration, because my Dad was playing in a cricket match. Since this was the time before home recording, that meant the cricket ground was populated with a group of children who’d been dragged away from the most important Who episode of the last few years. Fortunately, it turned out that one of our sullen little group lived near the ground – and his mother, bless her, decided she’d done her duty once she’d helped out with the cricket tea and invited us all to come back home and watch Who.
So I watched Jon Pertwee regenerate into Tom Baker in circumstances somewhat akin to the Coronation. A living room full of children all crowded round the television, plates of sandwiches being passed around, sun streaming in through the French windows and the sound of the second innings being played in the distance.
2 March 2013 at 18:06 #3023And the poster features a whole host of other reflections. Is Clara a reflection through time?
Could be. You can see reflections in a pond, btw. đ And in a River
“Through the Looking Glass” was once used by the Doctor to Amy (Power of Three), and in fact, a great deal of the Ponds’ on screen career consisted of dealing with alternate time streams, or there being two versions of Amy. The God Complex, repeated yesterday, had Amy and young Amelia.
1 March 2013 at 10:33 #2969Reposting @wolfweed‘s link:Â http://doctorwho.tumblr.com/
Thoughts? Because one big thought it gives me is – remember those weird newspaper articles, the ones that are nearly fifty years apart? Doesn’t this poster look like ‘Time is shattered’?
1 March 2013 at 10:28 #2967@wolfweed – I’m going to repost the poster link on the S7 Part 2 speculation thread – it looks like it might spark off some conversation along those lines.
Thanks for the link!
1 March 2013 at 09:47 #2965Explosive squibs also fit your avatar rather well. đ
26 February 2013 at 22:55 #2913Can feel a regeneration coming on myselfâŚ
Just don’t go any younger, okay? I’m vaguely worried that the Doctor will soon need a Companion to change his nappies…
26 February 2013 at 22:09 #2903@whisht – I like that one. Personally, I tend to alternate between the one I’ve got and the ‘Earthrise’ photo. If it’s random you want, I can offer anything from small piglets to waterfalls to cartoons. đ
26 February 2013 at 21:59 #2901Makes me shudder to think Whithouse is taking over DW
Being Human is a different show. Vampires of Venice, The God Complex (on next week) and School Reunion all show someone who knows both Doctor Who and the character of the Doctor pretty well.
He’s not my first choice, but I’d be fine with him as showrunner. And arcs – tricky. I completed a novel length Buffy fanfic where I chose to do a long, long arc (proper novel, it was) and by the end I was going ‘sh*t, this is hard.‘ But hopefully the next time I try it, I’ll have learnt something.
24 February 2013 at 20:20 #2885No, someone on one of my politics lists said the same thing; that there seems to have been a culture change in the last month or two.
I think it’s the nesting; it’s really not working. It means you can make a snippy reply to someone directly underneath their post, they can make one directly underneath that – and this is increasing the ambient temperature quite noticeably. Before, any heated replies were frequently on another page, and people might not even see them.
And one thing this means is that the place has become considerably more attractive to trolls, because they can troll their little hearts out on the front pages of the comments, instead of being stuck in page 7 of 15.
Whether the Guardian is going to admit that the nesting isn’t working, I don’t know. From their point of view, if their readership/ad take-up is going up, it’s working. If the atmosphere starts driving established readers away (and doesn’t replace them with new readers), it’s not.
23 February 2013 at 22:38 #2857Ray Cusick, designer of the Daleks, has died aged 84.
Terry Nation created them, but it was Ray who brought his creation to visual life.
RIP
23 February 2013 at 11:11 #2843Re: Outcasts – I bailed at episode 3. A friend of mine did manage to watch it all the way through, but the best she could come up with was ‘well, I have seen worse SF series’.
It was very depressing, and apparently interstellar travel reduces your IQ by at least 20 points. At least, that’s the only explanation I could give for all the characters behaving like idiots all the time.
The concept, as such, was fine. Trouble was, neither writer has any previous credits at all in science fiction – both are professional writers, but they don’t seem to have had anything published in the SF field (at least, not that I can find). Shakespeare on one side and urban angst on the other. Â Compare with Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat; the one had produced two children’s series within the SF/Fantasy genre, and the other had at least managed a short story (and of course The Curse of Fatal Death) to go alongside his mainstream TV work. And the Moff was only asked to provide a two-part episode initially, not an entire SF series.
The Guardian quote:
science fiction written by someone with no feel for either science or fiction.
probably says all you want to know.
22 February 2013 at 14:55 #2801Congratulations @miapatrick! My best ever Creative Writing mark is 94%, so I will now go off and sulk with jealousy đ
No, but seriously, very well done. It’s flipping hard to get the Grade 1 on creative writing – it basically means ‘this piece could be accepted for professional publication’.
18 February 2013 at 21:38 #2751@craig – You may have done. All the wild theories are starting to blur together in my mind. Will the universe survive?
One thing I do note is that the current cast list has actors to play the original Hartnell Companions – but none listed for later.   We should be onto Ben and Polly by the time Troughton comes in. Now it could be that the reason is simply that the Ben and Polly actors only have one or two lines; so they either haven’t yet been cast or RT didn’t bother going that far down the list.
But it’s interesting. The cast list is very much orientated to the show’s beginnings; then they bring in someone to play Troughton…
18 February 2013 at 20:46 #2747@jimthefish – yes, I wondered too, as soon as I saw it. I can understand that the dramatic through-line might be following from the successful start to Hartnell having to retire through illness. But, in that case, why recreate the Daleks on Westminster Bridge? The actor in me keeps going ‘Dear Lord, how much did that cost?‘
And now we have a Patrick Troughton. And 1960’s Daleks, in colour. On Westminster Bridge. As I said above, I reckon at least some of the main series filming is being sneaked in on the excuse that it’s for the drama-doc. And if so, that would suggest that just possibly Bradley and Shearsmith are also playing the First and Second Doctors, having been introduced to a new generation by means of the drama-doc.
Mark Gatiss seemed like a giggly little boy in the Daleks’ clip. I thought at first it was just the sheer fun of being able to recreate the iconic Dalek shot; now I’m wondering if there’s another reason he’s so very excited about this.
18 February 2013 at 19:06 #2743Some more news about An Adventure In Time And Space. It sounds like the play is going to cover all of the Hartnell years; they’ve just cast Reece Shearsmith as Patrick Troughton.
17 February 2013 at 12:34 #2731I can’t help wondering, @craig, if they’re taking advantage of the docu-drama to get some sneaky filming in for the main series.
And yes, there’s got to be at least a reference to Kennedy.
16 February 2013 at 20:50 #2723The Omega insignia crops up a lot, doesn’t it?
I remain puzzled by the two sets of Clerics. One set, River’s happy to work with. They’re happy to work with the Doctor. Â Bishop Octavian seems to distrust River because she killed the Doctor.
The other set wants to kill the Doctor.
Both sets are wearing the Omega symbol (with a possible Alpha in the middle of it), but the set that wants to kill the Doctor and does kidnap River has Angel wings. The other is fighting the Weeping Angels.
There’s also a reference to the ‘Gamma’ Forest being ‘Heaven neutral’. And yet, they have prayer, and beliefs…
Oh, and I don’t think that bloody cot turned up just to put a baby inside. Either the Doctor’s real name is written on it, or it has another purpose.
14 February 2013 at 23:30 #2663Well, they’ve finally got the Chrome ‘find’ function working properly. But there’s still no way of finding the latest comment, short of actually typing the current hour into ‘find’ and then doing a search.
12 February 2013 at 22:12 #2641That was me: I enthusiastically started speculating without switching boards. Oops.
Some actual news this time: the Radio Times has a four page article. It gives the upcoming as:
rumours of a convention, documentaries on BBC3, a Culture Show special on BBC2, an edition of Sue MacGregor’s The Reunion on Radio 4 … to dispel any rumours of doubt, our sources confirm that after filming the anniversary, they’ll be girding themselves for a Christmas special, then series eight and beyond…
Filming schedule or broadcast schedule? They don’t say. đ
12 February 2013 at 14:17 #2633Oh, and a really bonkers theory – Matt Smith is indeed in the Anniversary and Christmas Specials. But not as the Doctor.
He’s playing Omega.
12 February 2013 at 13:55 #2631Oh, and I would point out that advising actors to either take a holiday or get their agent to find them a job overseas is not unknown. Not when something spectacularly controversial is going to be broadcast. It’s now almost a given if you happen to be playing the murderer of a popular soap character.Â
::stares thoughtfully at the tinfoil and wonders what kind of a hat it would make::
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